OpenSUSE 11.1, Dell Latitude E4300 & Sound :-(

[Fabian Scheler]

Hello everybody,

a couple of weeks ago I already told my woes regarding the same topic.
The only difference: I used OpenSUSE 11.0 instead of 11.1. I hoped
that my sound problems (I didn't have sound) just "go away" by
upgrading to the newest OpenSUSE version - unfortunately this was not
the case.

I have the following problem: I do not have sound at all :-( there is
nothing but silence ...

My Laptop:
Dell Latitude E4300
Chipset: Intel G45S
Sound: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)

I already tried the following things

- I played with the sliders
- I played with alsaconfig as root
- I configured the sound device several times

I also tried to uninstall pulseaudio completely, many KDE 4.2
packages, however, apparently depend on libpulse0, so a I can't
uninstall that lib as I am using KDE 4.2 and I don't want to change
this, as I like KDE 4.2.

nothing ...

The thing I am really curious about: (as with OpenSUSE 11.0) I
compiled and installed a vanilla kernel (2.6.27.{10,11,12,13}) that I
configured via 'make oldconfig' - with the kernel I compiled myself
sound just works ... When I install a 2.6.28.{0,1,2} vanilla kernel I
do not have sound, too. Is there something that breaks sound in the
2.6.28 kernel that has been backported to the OpenSUSE-kernel? I don't
know what impact that libpulse0-package has, but I don't think it is
the source of my problem, as sound shouldn't work with the vanilla
kernel in that case.

Has anybody observed similar problems in the meantime? I would really
prefer to use the kernel that is shipped with OpenSUSE because of
security fixes etc ... Where can I dig further?

Any comment is appreciated!

Ciao, Fabian

Further information that might be helpful

/etc/modprobe.d/sound:

options snd-hda-intel model=laptop position_fix=1
options snd slots=snd-hda-intel
# u1Nb.Q1mP6YkvExA:82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel

dmesg | grep -i alsa yields no results

[medwinz]

On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 11:34 PM, Fabian Scheler

Post by Fabian Scheler
Chipset: Intel G45S
Sound: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)

Hi,
I have the same chipset, and it works :-)
see http://medwinz.blogsome.com/2008/12/26/workaround-for-sound-problem-on-opensuse-111-on-intel-ich9/

Post by Fabian Scheler
Has anybody observed similar problems in the meantime? I would really
prefer to use the kernel that is shipped with OpenSUSE because of
security fixes etc ... Where can I dig further?

Also try to update alsa

# zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/multimedia:/audio/openSUSE_11.1/
multimedia
# zypper install alsa alsa-utils alsa-tools alsa-firmware libasound2
# zypper rr multimedia

# zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/multimedia:/audio:/KMP/openSUSE_11.1/
multimedia
# zypper install alsa-driver-kmp-default
# zypper rr multimedia

Hope that helps

regards,
medwinz

[Fabian Scheler]

Hello medwinz,

thanks for your tip. At a first glance just updating the alsa packages
did not improve anything. After some try and error activities I
finally had sound with the shipped kernel :-) Then I rebooted and
sound was gone again :-( After some more try and error I found out
that sound is not really gone after rebooting (I checked that from the
textconsole and speaker-test) but after starting KDE 4.2 (maybe also
after starting KDE 4.1???). To get sound back it is not sufficient to
restart alsa alone (via /etc/init.d/alsasound restart) but I also had
to change the model specified in /etc/modprobe.d/sound (e.g. between
'laptop', 'dell-m4-1' or 'dell-m4-2'). Finally, I had to adjust the
levels in the alsamixer to get sound working again.

I guess KDE 4.2 is messing up alsa somehow, I will further dig into
that direction ...

Ciao, Fabian

[Fabian Scheler]

Post by Fabian Scheler
I guess KDE 4.2 is messing up alsa somehow, I will further dig into
that direction ...

gna - I found out that I just forgot to install the pulseaudio-plugin
for xine while using xine as phonon-backend ... Having installed that
plugin sound works nearly as expected. The only issue now is: I have
sound only when using the jacks of my notebook directly, not when
using the jacks of the docking station ...

Ciao, Fabian